An Age of Brimstone
by Avari de Lioncourt
Summary: When one power falls a vacuum opens, compelling something to take its place. The technos fallen from power leaving the city liberated—or leaderless. Now, what is there to stop a darker and more deadly force from filling the power vacuum they have left, on


Author: Avari

Rating: Series- R, chapter- PG

Disclaimer: Not mine never claimed it otherwise.

Summary: When one power falls a vacuum opens, compelling something to take its place. The technos fallen from power leaving the city liberated—or leaderless. Now, what is there to stop a darker and more deadly force from filling the power vacuum they have left, one without any shred of humanity?

Warnings: Major AU, probably abuse of canon timeline, OC, violence, dark themes

Author's Note: My first Tribe fan fiction and I'm a little bit nervous about this one. The timeline is a little bit unclear but this should be occurring somewhere towards the middle of season five. Spoilers may crop up periodically and I may move events around, so, you are forewarned. Now that we have that cleared up, I would love to dedicate this story to satinmagick. She's the reason I'm writing this and half the reason that I'm posting it.

Bet you weren't expecting that, were ya?

Read, review, constructive criticism is welcome. Flames will be put in the A/N at the beginning of the next chapter to be mocked and nasty emails will be sent so overall, pleas don't do it.

**Chapter One: Something Wicked This Way Comes**

The sun shone brightly, setting off a dazzlingly array of colors lingering in the air after the rains had passed. Dew still clung to prisms, each bead of water containing its own rainbow to match the larger one which arches over a pristine sky. It was a morning to forget all that had gone before, and pretend not to see the future. For a brief moment the city had been cleansed and left a second chance to renew itself. Hope was an almost tangible presence in the air; mingling with the bright graffiti and ashes of old arson that still littered the decrepit streets. With the bright caress of morning light old crimes seemed so far past and remote that even their lingering touch wasn't truly felt. It was a good day.

Amaranth was half blinded. Huddling deep into her faded, crimson cloak, the stranger picked her way careful among the debris of demolished cars and broken paving. What little joy she might have felt was soon evaporating as the early risers began to draw themselves from their self-righteous slumber. After the week of rainstorm atop rainstorm the restlessness pushed those more content to hide in safety out onto the street. Within moments the city was transformed, teeming with life and a fragile peace held in place only by impromptu accords as people sauntered or limped past each other. If sight were sound then surely the world would be deaf as well as blind by the cacophony which assaulted the senses now. Colors never found in nature swirled in a tidal wave of humanity, tribal markings blurring together until each seemed to move with a malicious sort of sentiency on the wears face, twisting and writhing obscenely.

Gaze trained to the floor, the young woman viciously quashed any masochist urge which encouraged her to face the madhouse of humanity. Despite the sun which hurt her eyes, unused to it after so long, she was cold. Underneath her cloak a long coat flowed, and then a skirt and pants and a jacket and long sleeves, each set in blatant defiance of any rules governing style. If not for the uniform burgundy which hid the rest of her ensemble from view, the strange girl might have been forced to concede she was, in fact, contributing to the problem as much as any other walking these streets.

Flowing right, away from the main street, she took to a back alley away from the noise and bustle of the wakened city. All too soon the fights would start, the delicate peace of the morning shattered for reasons more fiction than fact. A glass smile quirked her lips a little, accompanied by a delicate snort. _It's all been forgotten, any other existence but this one. That fine schooling that once mattered so much is as buried as parents, no longer mourned. It's all gone, all that once was. Now it's just violence and destruction, a return to the primitive. Sound and fury, signifying nothing as the poor player frets his hour upon the stage and is heard no more._

Lost in her brooding and melancholy thoughts, she never noticed the men who flowed around her, didn't pause as she walked deeper and deeper into their midst. And when the first appeared from the shadows she hardly noticed and tried to walk past. It was the vice grip on her arm that drew her, startled and wide-eyed from the dark thoughts which had wrapped her so seductively in their embrace. A boy—no, a man in this age, gripped her arm tightly. His hair was an orange not normally seen outside of signs for strip clubs. Black eyeliner pained a diagonal scar over his left eye and was crossed by three more lines. One his other cheek a labyrinthine swirled.

"Pardon me, didn't see you there." Shrugging out of the painful grip she stepped back, glancing quickly to her right only to see a few more men—no, not men, boys—materialize from the dark. Not trusting her back to any of those already revealed she turned her head enough to confirm her fear. Two more flanker her rear while another three closed off her left. Hand going to the clasp of her hood, she still stepped back even knowing what was behind her. _Silent toe—soft heel click, silent toe—soft heel click. _

"That was sort of the point, babe." His smile was purely malicious, dark and crackling with a juvenile malignance that once would have been conditioned away or punished in an ordered world. Now, though, that order had disappeared and the bullies who were so afraid of there own shadows hid them in the darkness of back alley streets. His kind ruled in chaos, until something bigger and badder came along. "Chill, sweetie… this won't hurt. Much." And then he laughed, just like every story-book, TV, movie, comic villain, he tossed his head back and laugh and she was far from impressed.

Dark eyes went flat.

_Silent toe—soft heel click. _

_Silent toe—soft heel click. _

_Silent toe—soft heel click. _

Bodies slouched against the sides of brick walls, eyes rolled back in heads which lolled on their weak necks. The boy wearing a labyrinth lay underneath a pointed boot, soft feel clicked over his sternum. Gazing up with terrified eyes he tried to scuttle back on broken arms, only to feel the point of another kind of stiletto concealed in the boots' heel.

"Hello lover, how 'bout a kiss?"

TBC...


End file.
